Imago Dei O (for Oops)

Perhaps I’m way off base here but I’m struggling to find some early authority that says that in the fall humanity lost the ‘image of God.’ I was wanting to point out that part of the work of Christ was to recover the lost ‘image of God’ in humans, but I’m not finding this to be the case. I read passages like Romans 8.29 and 2 Corinthians 3.18 but the emphasis is not on recovery of something lost but simply on conformity to Christ’s ‘likeness’ (Rom 8.29) and 'being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another’ (2 Cor. 3.18). Neither of the immediate contexts refer to the fall or sin or mention 'recovery' to God's image in any way. I scanned Wesley’s sermon “The Image of God” again and see that he refers to the lost ‘image of God.’ He points out well that the capacity for human understanding, will, liberty, and happiness are significantly diminished such that we cannot redeem ourselves. I don’t disagree with his reasoning on how sin affects these faculties, but as I said in an earlier post I don’t think these are the primary characteristics of what the ‘image of God’ means, at least as it is presented in Genesis (this would’ve been fun to explain to an ordination board of the United Methodist Church).

This is not to deny the fall nor to affirm that sin does not have anything to do with the ‘image of God,’ just that it doesn’t mean that the image is lost or gone. If the ‘image’ is primarily (in Genesis) about relationship in the four directions I have mentioned several times (toward God, neighbor, self, and creation) then we can say that sin affects HOW we relate to God, et al., without saying that we have lost the relationships or relational capacities completely. In other words, we are improperly, rather dysfunctionally, related in these four areas; it is not that we are not related to them at all. Does that make sense? Case in point: Adam in Genesis 3...felt ‘shame’ (how his disobedience affects his relation to himself) after he ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It is not as though he didn’t relate to himself anymore…rather, he did not relate to himself (or know himself) rightly. Adam and Eve still related to one another…they just didn’t relate properly as they did in Genesis 2. Adam still had a relationship with the earth (work was part of the ‘good’ created order)…now it was going to cause him difficulty. Adam and Eve still related to God…God provided for them thereafter…they simply (though importantly) could not relate to God in the same way as before, walking and talking in the proximity to God they enjoyed in Eden. Perhaps we can say that though humans are still in the ‘image of God’ we are not ‘imaging God’ properly.

So in what sense can we say Christ ‘restores’ the ‘image of God’ in humanity? It is that in the atoning act of his Incarnation that Christ does not merely restore relationships to God, neighbor, self, and creation; but that he restores these relations to their proper level…i.e., he restores and redeems our relationships ‘rightly.’ But the writers of the New Testament seem to make more of it than that. Otherwise we might be able to refer to the Incarnation as God’s ‘Plan B,’ as it were. When I read passages like 2 Cor. 3.18 that talks about ‘being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another’ I don’t hear language of sin or fallen-ness (how could one call that a ‘degree of glory’) as though Christ’s goal in uniting himself to humanity is about returning us to Eden. We’re not hearing a re-making into someone ‘ACCORDING TO the image of God [or Christ],’ which is in the language of Genesis. Instead we are hearing of being conformed or transformed ‘INTO the image of Christ.’ I think Lewis (though he was not the first) was getting at this when he talked about God’s work of turning the ‘created’ (i.e., humans) into ‘begotten,’ if I am remembering him correctly. Perhaps? Can I say this as a Methodist? (If not, it's a good thing I’m not getting ordained now, huh?)